


She Lit a Fire

by Notfye



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (past) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Marius-centric, Past Suicide Attempt, Suicidal Thoughts, a shameful lack of pontmercying in this first chapter tbh, but it comes in later rest assured, read as marius doesn't make friends with the amis till college and it'll make more sense, undiagnosed mental illness/disorder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-02-21 23:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13153953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notfye/pseuds/Notfye
Summary: “Why did you come find me, anyway?” Marius asks.“You didn’t seem dangerous. After I stopped being pissed at you I figured out that you were exactly what you said you were. Lonely, I mean. We stayed in separate rooms for the first few nights anyway, so it wasn’t like you could murder me in my sleep or something. And even then, I have a knife, so don’t pull anything.”  She smiles at her own joke.“Do you actually have a knife?”“Yeah,” Éponine shrugs again. “It’d be kinda stupid to not have one, don’t you think?”(In which there are road trips, depressive episodes, and a clumsy sort of love.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been watching a lot of BuzzFeed unsolved lately, and listening to Lord Huron, also high school sucks, so here’s the product of all that.
> 
> Fair warning, this gets dark at points, but not specifically in this chapter. I will always warn in the notes ahead of time and happily give summaries to anyone who doesn't want to read those parts. Tags will update as necessary, please, please make sure you're reading them.
> 
> Also, thank you to Fen (sinteresting_facts) (again) who, while not actually knowing a thing about les mis, still looked over and continues to look over passages of this work. 
> 
> This story starts when Marius is in between high school and college, so he's 18. Title comes from She Lit a Fire by Lord Huron.

The bus station is cold and grey in the morning light.

Marius stands alone, duffle bag slung over one shoulder, a ticket in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. The tea is English breakfast and the ticket is to California, the prospect of going so far turning his stomach a little. The point is to run away, but perhaps that’s a bit far. His head hurts a little, a migraine in the making, and he can’t imagine a bus ride will help it, but he hasn't given himself much choice. His grandfather is surely up by now, he can’t go back without facing some sort of consequences.

That morning, he had taken a credit card, the one with his own name on it, from his grandfather’s room while he was still sleeping. It wouldn’t be noticed missing until the next bill came, Marius figured, and so he had a little less than a month to use it. He took all the cash he’d stowed in various places around his room, too, and the books that he’s read so much that they’re falling apart; One of them, surprisingly enough, is an atlas that he’s had since he was a kid. He has enough clothes to get through the summer, too, sweaters and collared shirts, all he ever wears.

He takes out his phone and turns it off, then makes his way to his terminal.

 

The bus itself is almost empty. He stumbles into a man’s chair as he’s making his way to his own and mumbles out a muted sorry. The windows are foggy from the coolness of the morning air and the ride too bumpy to let him lean against the window and fall asleep. Still, he pulls his bag to his chest, tips his head back uncomfortably against the seat,  and floats between consciousness and sleep for the next several hours. He sits up often, to dazedly look out the window or because he’s forgotten where he was. The hours tick by slowly, dulled by the hum of the bus and the sudden loss of the ability to tell time.

He pulls himself out of his daze somewhere in western Kansas and gets off at the next stop.

 

The woman at the residence inn reception desk looks pretty and happy, Marius thinks, but then he sees the lines of her face through her makeup, betraying her strain. Still, he thinks that he must look worrisome to her: he can feel that his hair is out of place, that his shirt is wrinkled, that his face must look sickly pale but bruised around his eyes.

“A single, please,” he says as slides a credit card across the counter. His voice sounds rough, he thinks, like it’s catching on every crevice in his throat. He’s pretty sure it is unlike what it should be.

The receptionist picks up the card with bright red fingernails. “Do you have any preferences?” She asks, voice high and lilting.

He shakes his head and, though he makes it through the remainder of the conversation, he won’t be able to recall anything past that point.

Marius drops his bag off in his room and stands, staring out the window blankly towards the parking lot. He’s not sure for how long, but he pulls himself out of it enough to recognize that he would really like a cup of tea. He knows that there’s a little station for drinks in the lobby, and it would be easy to go a get one there, but the self-preserving part of his brain, the part that will tell him to get out of bed after fifteen hours or that will convince him to have a meal if he hasn’t eaten all day or to stop eating when he’s had too much, tells him that walking in town won’t be awful, because there are about fifteen stores, and it’ll help stretch out his legs from the bus ride.

Marius walks on the sidewalks with his head down, shoulders hunched and tight around his ears. People glance at him and then their eyes return to where they were before, but they look back over their shoulders at him. He feels like an outsider; He is not from this town, much smaller than his own, but maybe it’s curiosity and not annoyance. He says it back to himself, but it doesn’t sway what his mind is telling him.

When he reaches the little store, with pre-made pots of coffee and hot water, he makes a cup for himself and gets in line behind an older man wearing a baseball cap covering graying hair. Marius turns his phone back on, which then chimes several times in quick succession. He fumbles for the mute switch, but the barrage stops before he can flick it. The clerk and the man turn to look at him, and the buzzing of the fluorescent lights is deafening in the aftermath. He thinks he gives a meek sorry, but honestly, he’s not quite sure. He pays for his tea and exits quickly.

When he gets back to the hotel he extends his stay for a week, and the receptionist with the red nails doesn’t question it. In the month that follows, he develops a routine. Every week he extends his stay, he always has a lie at the ready but it’s never needed. He reads voraciously and eats little, often times forgetting until the early hours of the morning, when he just goes to bed instead. In these days the nights roll and swell, grow into weeks of time forgotten. He reads anything he gets his hands on; There’s a library in town and he gives back most of the books while the rest he orders from Amazon. He keeps coming back to _The Bell Jar_ , what little of the lessons he remembers about it from high school. He reads his copy again and again until the pages begin to tear out. He orders a new one. Time ticks by with all of those sad quotes, muted by their bluntness, weighing on him.

He can’t seem to sleep anymore. He goes to bed just before sunrise and still wakes up in the early morning, down to the hotel’s breakfast spread for tea and rarely any food, but eventually, he learns to take something back upstairs with him to eat later. Eating in the morning makes him nauseous, anyway.

At the end of three and a half weeks, Marius goes to an ATM and takes out the biggest advance on his credit card he can, which is rather large, as it’s on his grandfather’s account and so, his high credit. He tucks the cash away into his wallet, though he thinks he should put it safely away in his duffle at some point. He schedules to check out of the hotel the next day and struggles in packing up all his newly acquired books with everything else, and, by the time he's finished, his duffle looks lumpier than before. The next morning, he buys a new ticket at the station, for a bus heading to Utah, but making a stop in Northern Colorado, where he plans to disembark.

Marius gets the _I’m canceling your credit card_ text as he’s boarding the bus, and he can’t help a self-satisfied smile.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is a sort of resignation.
> 
> (Or, where the other main character shows up, some questionable actions are taken, and a road trip is properly started.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back!! With a longer chapter than last time, too! Enjoy!!
> 
> (Tags have changed. Please take note.)

When Marius was in middle school, he was always one of the last ones to leave classrooms. He liked to take his time to put his books and binders away, and he didn’t have any friends he cared enough to keep up with, anyway. 

After class on one of these days, (and it must have been one of the harder days, because he can’t imagine why else his teacher would have said it, if he didn’t look so sad or lonely or forlorn), his English teacher looked over at him and said, “You’re going to have a much better time in college.” 

Then, Marius had nodded quickly and run out of the classroom, his head down and eyes watery for a reason he could not name. 

Now, Marius clings to the first part of that memory, as the only piece of hope he has. 

 

The thing about college, Marius thinks, is that it is just something he has to reach, and he will be happy. He thinks that, maybe, if he can make it to September, he’ll be fine. There have been periods, long ones, where he didn’t think he would make it, but it’s so close now, that he might as well wait it out, might as well see if they were right, after all. 

It is a sort of resignation.

 

***

 

There’s something lonely about the night, the bus rolling through neighborhoods of dimly lit houses that look little more than shifting shadows in the trees. Still, he cannot sleep, but instead dreams of ghosts and old pioneer travelers and the sun rising to a brilliant blue sky. Every minute feels like a day, every hour, a decade. It is cold for summer and the dark feels like a heavy blanket. It’s silly, he knows, sunrise must not be more six hours away, and yet the dark scares him. 

 

Then, they come to a stop. A station, with fluorescent lights over concrete, crisscrossing painted lines that don’t mean anything. 

A girl gets on the bus. She looks like a storm, Marius thinks, dressed in all black, messy hair, standing tall. She sits in the seats diagonal from him. 

Marius, suddenly, cannot find it within himself to make more futile attempts at sleep. 

Hours go by, and Marius isn’t sure if it’s because of the change that this girl has brought with her or simply how his mind works, but one moment the bus is just pulling away from the stop and the next it’s pulling into another, where he’s getting off. He swears he’s been reading something on his phone the entire time but he can’t remember what it is. 

He stands. The girl down the aisle does, too. She’s only got a small backpack with her.

In the light outside the bus, he sees her face properly. Her eyes are nearly black and her face is very set, to the point where it seems like it might just be an act, but Marius can’t quite figure it out. She has circles around her eyes, like him, and is seemingly traveling alone, but he picked up on that already.

They stand next to each other for a moment. She looks down the hallway, away from him. He glances that way, then looks to the information desk. 

She walks one way, he walks the other. 

 

There’s a motel nearby, he learns from the lady at the desk. No, not too far to walk, but she offers to call him a cab all the same. 

When he arrives, it strikes him as the type of motel you get murdered in, but he doesn’t think he has the funds to spend anymore nights with Marriott. The man at the desk is old, and dressed better than he should be, considering where he is spending his evening. His voice is like gravel being walked over, and kind. 

The bed Marius sleeps in is old and lumpy, the comforter is one of those ugly remains of the 1970s, all pinks and purples and washed out flowers. He does not sleep well, but, then again, does he ever?

He decides then that he doesn’t like Colorado much, and the next morning he’s back at the bus station, buying another Greyhound ticket. He gets in line, still blinking the sleep from his eyes; Everything’s still too blurry for him to see properly. 

Then he notices who is standing in front of him, and he can see perfectly fine.

He doesn’t mean to hear what ticket the girl has requested, but he does anyway. Marius buys the same ticket as her without really thinking about it, and doesn’t realize where he’s going until he’s already on the bus. 

There, finally, after weeks of little sleep, even with the sunlight streaking past his eyes, he drifts off. 

His dreams are anxious things, where there is something bothering him that he’s always on the verge of figuring out, but never actually does. They’re blue and grey and black, there’s water and then shadows but it hardly matters because he drowns in both. Something pulls him to one direction, then the other, and he feels as though he might be torn apart if-

Then there’s a jolt, and his eyes flick open in time to see the girl getting off the bus, so he grabs his duffle bag as quick as he can to get off after her. When he makes it to the door, she is nowhere to be found. 

 

The motel he stays in that night isn’t as terrifying. He spends the afternoon reading, and by some stroke of self preservation, he motivates himself to go find dinner somewhere in town. 

After dinner, he reaches into his pocket to check how much money he has left and finds empty air in its place. 

His wallet. It’s disappeared, and, with a cold feeling, he realizes that he never moved the advance to his duffle bag. 

Marius spins around on his heel and starts frantically scanning the ground, looking for where it may have fallen. All he can see is the grey concrete, no leather in sight. 

He glances up at the next streetlight and sees a figure standing below it, dangling something from its fingers. 

“You looking for something?” it calls out. Marius squints and the figure rearranges itself into the girl from earlier. Everything starts to make sense all at once. 

He makes his voice steady, or at least tries, “Yes, I am, thank you.”

She throws his wallet at him. He fumbles, catches it against his chest.

“Why were you following me?” the girl asks. Her voice is tough, scary, even.

He sputters for a moment but then says, “You were traveling alone.” And after he’s said it, he realizes how creepy it sounds. “I mean, you were alone. You looked lonely. I don’t have anyone to travel with, either.” Marius’ face burns with embarrassment. 

“Have you ever heard of talking to people?”

No, Marius thinks. He’s never been good at speaking to people, always has been brought into groups only when people needed an extra partner or something like that, and never had any attachments at school because he didn’t know how to make them. 

He has, apparently, taken too long to answer, and so the girl throws him one last dirty look and turns around. 

“Wait,” he calls out, “What’s your name?”

The girl turns back to look at him, somewhere between angry and aghast. “What the fuck?” She asks him, and then walks off. Marius is left alone, and slowly, as though coming out of a daze, he walks back to his motel. 

 

For the rest of the time he spends in the little town, Marius stops actively seeking out whoever that girl was and goes back to his books. He has a nagging feeling of having missed something, that something has slipped right through his fingers. He finds it easiest to ignore with stories not so well-worn, so his new copy of  _ The Bell Jar  _ remains relatively unused. He almost reads  _ In Cold Blood _ instead, but he worries that, with where he’s staying, any possibility of a few hours’ sleep will be completely driven away if he does. He gets  _ The Perks of Being a Wallflower  _ from the recesses of his bag, and though every time he thinks about it being meant for someone younger he feels embarrassed, he likes it quite a bit, anyway. Ninth-grade Marius would have just despaired, though, if he read it when he was supposed to. 

He thinks he’ll leave, after a week or so, not because he dislikes the area, but because the sleeping arrangements are less than ideal. The walls creak at night and he doesn’t actually think the door of his room is heavy enough to protect him from anything. He goes back, again, to the bus station, and stops at a shop on the way, buys a box of granola bars. He’s a little proud of himself.

 

Marius is about to cross the street when a car pulls up to him. A spike of anxiety shoots through his stomach, and grows as the passenger side window rolls down.

“Get in,” says the girl, who has apparently acquired a car. 

“What?” Marius sputters. Suddenly, he can’t keep up with what’s happening. “Where did you get a car?” he asks.

“You said you didn’t have anyone to travel with,” the girl says, “I’m someone to travel with. I have a vehicle to use. Or do you just not like me, now that you’re not the one being creepy?”

After a minute, Marius opens the back door, puts down his bag, and sits in the passenger seat. 

She doesn’t drive right away, and the silence between them slowly builds into a awkward wall. 

Marius coughs, “So, what’s your name?”

“Éponine,” she says, but doesn’t sound pleased. 

There’s a pause, and Marius realizes that’s as much of a cue as he’s going to get. “I’m, uh, I’m Marius.”

She looks over at him, and he can’t quite figure out what emotion is on her face, but it almost looks like she’s sizing him up. Almost. She turns back to the front of the car and asks, without as much harshness, “Where were you headed?”

“Nowhere.”

She looks over at him again.

“In particular,” he amends.

The sun has come out from behind the clouds and it’s already starting to heat the car up. Marius wonders if there’s working air conditioning; he doesn’t want to have to roll up his sleeves.

“I was headed to the middle of nowhere,” Éponine says. “If that’s something that appeals to you.” There’s something wry in the last part of her sentence, and Marius thinks it’s probably a good sign. 

 

The highway is not nearly as lonely if there’s someone beside him. 

It turns out that there isn’t actually working air conditioning in the car, so Marius rolls down his window, and when Éponine notices, she rolls down her own and smiles wickedly. She turns up the radio, some song he doesn’t know, and lets it pour out onto the road behind them. He’s relieved; It saves him the talking and she looks less begrudging than before. 

After a long time, they go off one of the exits and come to a small town. The roads are paved with dirt in some areas and Marius thinks there might only be one, lone stoplight. 

Éponine pulls into a parking lot for a small diner and gets out of the car without saying anything. Marius, a beat later, follows. 

 

The diner is one of those terrible, stereotypical highway ones, with vinyl and a 1950s aesthetic. The hostess looks overworked and tired. When they sit, the benches squeak. Sunlight pours over the table, dust getting caught in the beams. 

Éponine doesn’t look at him, just picks up the menu and starts flipping through it idly. 

He follows her lead and guesses that they won’t be talking very much. But still, he’s curious about her, all of his questions are starting to pile up in his throat. 

“Where are you from?” he asks.

“East coast,” she says, without looking up. 

Marius looks down at his own menu without really reading it, pulls at the skin around his thumbnail. He doesn’t pretend to be well versed in social situations, but he doesn’t think anyone would know what to do with this. The whole thing, a mess made by an inability to think things through. 

“Are you paying?” Éponine looks at him. 

He makes a clumsy noise before he says, “I can.” Too late he realizes he could’ve said something clever about her picking up the car, how it could be the least he could do.

“Good.”

The waitress comes back a little later with a pinched smile, her hair falling from her bun and into her face. She collects the menus and walks away; Marius has already forgotten what the two of them ordered. 

“How are you living like that?” Éponine asks, and nods towards his sweater. Light blue, it’s the color of the sky. 

Unconsciously, he tugs his sleeves down and turns his hands so his fingers are buried in the fabric. Éponine traces the motion with her eyes. 

“It’s cold in here,” he says. “The air conditioning is all the way up.” 

That doesn’t explain it all, he knows that, but Éponine stops asking questions. 

 

Marius doesn’t pay enough attention to know what town they’re in when the stop to get a motel. The sky is dusty pink and the world feels soft. Marius gives Éponine money, enough for two rooms. When she comes back out she tosses a key to him and hoists her small bag to her shoulder. 

“Are you hungry?” She asks. 

Marius shakes his head. “Are you? I’ll give you money, if you are.”

“No,” she says, “I’m set for that. I only eat properly when there are rich boys around.” She smiles to him a moment, then goes to her room.

About an hour later, Marius hears the car’s engine start, and he finally figures out what she meant. 

 

A week later, they’re lying on the hood of the car together, watching the sky turn from twilight to darkness, the stars slowly popping out into the velvet. The day had been long, aching, almost; driving past fields and hardly stopping. They’ve been joking with each other more, and becoming more comfortable, which Marius is thankful for. But, there are times, or whole days, where Éponine is edgy for no reason that Marius can pick up, and then the two of them are suddenly back to square one. 

“So what prompted this trip of yours?” Éponine asks, her voice sharp and cutting. “You don’t seem like the type of guy to just pack up and leave.” She turns to look at him, casual in a way that looks trying. 

Well, I’m not, really, he thinks. 

“I didn’t want to be at home anymore.”

“Why’s that?” she asks. Marius looks at her and is struck by the fact that she is very pretty in a certain sort of way, that, if this were the 1960s, the red lipstick and cigarettes would suit her well. 

“I didn’t,” he tries to place his words in a way that makes sense, “I didn’t want to be around anymore.”

He thinks he catches her muttering something like, “well that’s a solution,” under her breath. 

“Aren’t you young to be traveling alone?” He asks her. It’s not meant to be as prickly and patronizing as it comes out, but the thing is, his other solution was a lot more permanent. 

“Yeah, maybe.” Éponine’s back to staring at the stars. “But unless you’re lying on your license, I’m the same age as you, so. You seem like you were born in March, by the way.”

“Why were you looking at my license?”

“If you were being followed by some guy who you didn’t know,” she says, “And you didn’t know if he was dangerous, you’d want to know as much about him as you could.”

There is a silence. Marius tries and fails to identify constellations. The only one he knows is Orion, and it’s not winter. 

“Why did you come find me, anyway?” Where did you get a car, he wonders. 

She looks out to where the sky is fading from orange to dark blue. “You didn’t seem dangerous. After I stopped being pissed at you I figured out that you were exactly what you said you were. Lonely, I mean.”

He waits, wonders if she’s going to keep speaking. She doesn’t seem as edgy as before, maybe the night air is helping. 

“I mean, we stayed in separate rooms, for the first few nights, so it wasn’t like you could murder me in my sleep or something. And even then, I have a knife, so don’t pull anything.” She shrugs and smiles at her own joke. 

“Do you actually have a knife?” Marius asks.

“Yeah,” she shrugs again. “It’d be kinda stupid to not have one, don’t you think?”

 

The sky above them fades to black, and eventually, Éponine slides off the car’s hood. She stretches, says, “We should get to a motel or something.”

“I can,” Marius starts, “I can drive, if you like?”

She looks at him a moment, then tosses him the keys. “Don’t get us lost,” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have some news, I'm going to be very busy for the next couple months with other projects (one of which is a TSOA fic tho, so, if you're into that, keep an eye out for it!) so know that this fic will probably not see another update until April/May, and that's if I get my act together in a reasonable amount of time. However, the next chapter's gonna be a long one, so get hype for that. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading! Feel free to hit me up over on my tumblr (notfye) & I'll see y'all in a couple months!
> 
> UPDATE 4/6/18:
> 
> Hi everyone! I had a lot less time in March to write than what I anticipated - I was in a show, and I didn't realize how much time was needed for my part - so I'm afraid everything is going to be pushed back a bit. The new chapter should be out late May/June at this point. Thank you for your patience with me! - Fye


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Éponine smiles at him, a little wicked, a little proud. 
> 
> (In which locks are picked, everyone has a rather melancholic time, and Marius starts to fall.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay technically it's still June and I am not late, however, I'm sorry for how long this chapter took me anyway. 
> 
> Again, tags have changed. In this chapter, there's some stuff relating both to self-harm and suicide. If you think that might be something that you'll have trouble reading, check the end notes, I've put a greater description of it there.
> 
> Other than that, enjoy!!

Marius does not know who Éponine is. He doesn’t know how she takes her coffee or her favorite season, if she has a favorite movie or a book torn to pieces by how often it’s been read. But he wants to.

He is immensely curious about this person he’s found himself traveling with. His words are too clumsy, so he waits for these things to become apparent instead. They stop at a gas station, and Marius watches as Éponine pours an excessive amount of sugar into a cup of coffee. Or, she’ll complain about the cold even if it’s 65 degrees out. He gets the feeling that she knows a great deal about science, but doesn’t show it in much more than offhanded comments. She doesn’t have any books of her own with her, but sometimes, among her disappearances to steal, she’ll slink off to a library or a bookstore, too.

This isn’t enough, though, so he waits for more of her to reveal itself, bit by bit, to him.

 

For a little while, Marius feels like he’s stopped falling apart. Éponine keeps him on track, in a way. She doesn’t forget to feed herself, ever. She’ll come back with something half hidden in her jacket, or money clenched in hand, and Marius remembers that it’s time to eat. She never asks for money, either, which is increasingly worrying to him. Still, together, they eat, and Marius feels like a functioning human.

Then, they get to Montana. Their first night there, Marius stays up until five in the morning. He knows he shouldn’t, he knows he’s not doing anything, and still he can’t make himself stand up and walk to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Once he sees the sky start to color, though, he’s snapped out of it in a moment. He berates himself for taking so long as he falls asleep.

He wakes up at nine, still in the same position he fell asleep in. There’s a heavy buzzing in his head. Éponine’s awake, padding around the room barefoot. He’s half dreaming and incoherent, but already he knows he won’t be able to get back to sleep.

Éponine doesn’t like shoes, he thinks disjointedly, staring at her bare feet from where he’s pillowed his head on his arms.

He stands, a little wobbly, and realizes that Éponine has been watching him since he woke up. She looks bewildered.

“Go back to sleep,” she says.

“I can’t.” His eyes are dry and he thinks that that’s the worst part of being tired; the burning eyes.

“What do you usually do?”

She knows that this isn’t the first time, and part of him wants to panic, but he doesn’t have the energy. His hair feels greasy even though it isn’t.

“I read,” he says. “I drink tea.”

She looks at him, a few seconds pass. Then, she says, “Come on,” and heads for the door. He grabs a book and follows.

 

They drive for a long time, it’s nearly noon by the time they get there. Marius isn’t enough of himself to talk.

There’s a lake, a huge thing, surrounded by deep green mountains and filled with the skeletons of old trees. Éponine offers no explanation, and he doesn’t particularly want one. She digs in the trunk of the car for a moment, and Marius, even in such a state, can’t imagine that she packed ahead.

Still, she produces a blanket. Marius follows her down a trail. The sunlight gives way to the patchy shadows of evergreens. He wants the walking to help, but it doesn’t, just feels tedious and makes the drumming in his head louder.

Finally, mercifully, they reach an outcropping. Éponine leads the way to the edge of it and spreads the blanket under a tree, which he falls onto hardly a second later. Laying down is easier than standing upright, and a feeling of nausea he didn’t realize was there starts to dissipate.

Éponine looks at him with an expression he can’t place, and he is made a little uncomfortable by all that’s happened today already, so he looks away. The trees above him are a shadowy sort of green. Their needles form long fingers that obscure the sun.

Despite everything, it’s peaceful.

He reads for a bit, something that strikes a bit too similar a note to his own life. He almost forgets Éponine is there. But she is, sitting at the edge of his vision, lighting a cigarette and scowling at the sun.

Marius makes it through a few chapters before he gives up. He moves so that one arm lies on his forehead, the other beneath his head, and closes his eyes, if only to keep out the sun.

He must drift off, because when he sits up again, the sky is like a bruise.

“What happened to not being able to sleep?” Éponine asks. She’s eating a granola bar. Marius isn’t sure where she got it from.

“I didn’t think I could,” he says, surprised at himself.

She stands up. “I didn’t want to wake you, but it’s getting dark. There are like, bears, or whatever, out here.” He stands too and haphazardly folds the blanket. A light flicks on, Éponine must have taken his phone at some point.

Marius rushes to catch up with her.

“I think I could use some food,” he says when they’re side by side again.

“Food would be nice,” she says as she shoves her wrapper into her pocket.

 

They end up at a bar.

It’s tacky, but alright, and the food smells nice, so it’s not so bad. There’s a loud group in the corner, and taxidermy on the walls. It would be enough, any other day, to drive him off. But today he feels as though he’s made a small triumph, and could maybe make something more.

Éponine always eats voraciously when he’s around, orders as much food as she thinks Marius will pay for. Marius has been sheltered, but he knows by now that Éponine has lived never knowing where her next meal is coming from, that she was raised to believe that any crumb could be her last. It doesn’t bother him, how much she eats. He hasn’t found himself to be short on cash yet.

He notices not long after the waiter comes with their food that she isn’t eating as quickly as usual. The group in the corner rises in volume. Éponine makes a strange sort of jerking motion, like an aborted flinch. Her eyes keep to the ground.

He reaches for her hand, and she wrenches it from his grasp.

She keeps staring at the ground, and he tries to figure out what to do.

“We can go, if you want,” he says quietly.

“You haven’t eaten yet today,” she says, looking at his half finished plate.

“That doesn’t matter,” he says, shakes his head, “I’ll be fine.” She looks up at him. He doesn’t really feel like he knows her well enough yet to see her like this. He stands up, accidentally scrapes his chair along the floor, and goes to search for their waiter.

 

In the car, with Marius driving, Éponine thanks him.

“It’s nothing,” he says. “You took care of me this morning.”

He doesn’t want to take his eyes off the road; driving makes him nervous. But Éponine’s silence is not so unyielding as it usually is. He looks over at her, and she’s not smiling, but looking a little fond.

 

They leave Montana the next day and are both glad to be gone.

 

The motel in the next town they make it to only has one single room left, so they decide to drive a little further and splurge on a double at an actual hotel.

It takes ten minutes for Éponine to find the door to the roof and another two to pick the lock.

“How’d you do that?” Marius asks.

“What, are you surprised?” She walks out. “I could teach you, if you want.”

“Sure,” he says, and it comes out too eager and high. She raises an eyebrow at him.

“I mean, if you’re not joking-“ he starts.

“No, I’ll teach you,” Éponine says, “But not now.”

He follows her out onto the roof, it makes a crackling noise under his shoes. He looks up. In truth, there is no real town here, no lights to burn out the sky. He can see more stars than he can at home.

“Do you know any constellations?” he asks.

“Yeah.” She’s wandered over towards the edge, but turns back to look at him. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know. It’s good to know we’ve been telling the same stories for forever.” He feels, inexplicably, a little more whole, even if he can’t tell what stories he’s looking at.

Éponine stares at him until she doesn’t, and becomes concerned with the street below instead. Marius walks over to the edge, and, careful not to touch her, he asks, “Look at the stars with me?”

Éponine looks a him a little wide-eyed, like he’s a bit foolish. “Sure,” she says. He lies down on the roof, and so does she. They don’t speak, and Marius can’t find it in himself to complain. The silence isn’t taut, and he feels something relax that he didn’t even know was tensed.

They lie there for a while, and with the stars above him and the sound of both of their breathing, he’s calmer than he expected to be.

After a while, there’s a thump from what sounds like down the hallway inside the hotel, and then a muffled sound of running. Marius looks to Éponine, who is already on her feet. She rushes off to hide behind a wall on the other side of the roof. Marius, a beat behind, follows her. There’s a few moments, the silent ticking of a clock, before a worker bursts out onto the roof. He shouts “Who’s out here?” and it sounds so silly, so scripted that Marius wants to laugh. Éponine shakes her head at him, but her face is cracking with laughter, too.

The worker walks around the perimeter of the roof. Éponine finally stops almost laughing when he draws to close to their hiding place, and Marius sobers along with her. When the worker finally gives up and leaves, the two of them are still crouched on their corner of the roof, and Éponine smiles at him, a little wicked, a little proud.

 

They don’t stay out on the roof much longer after that. There isn’t much more to look at, anyway. Back in their room, Éponine produces a bag of chips from her bag. “Do you have a Netflix account?” she asks.

“Yeah. Where did you get those from?”

“Where do you think? Do you want to watch something?”

He nods and because neither one of them has a computer, they end up crowding around Marius’ phone. He isn’t sure what they’re watching but it’s just boring enough that he can fall asleep to it.

 

In the morning light, the room is cream colored and his phone has toppled to be face down on the bed. And, he has, sometime in the night, wrapped an arm around Éponine. One of her hands is on his rib cage and her face is tilted towards his chest.

He’s not sure what to do. He doesn’t want to move and risk waking her, if she were to wake up while he was still half in bed, there is no chance that she’d be alright with the sleeping arrangements. He thinks that he should just let his eyes fall closed again and wait for her to wake up, let her choose what to do.

 

When Éponine does wake up, she doesn’t move like she’s been burned, like before. Instead, she gets up slowly, like she doesn’t want to wake Marius. He only opens his eyes when he hears the bathroom door click shut and the shower turn on.

The whole experience leaves him feeling strange. It’s fine, he thinks, it’s not really a weird thing to have happened. They’re traveling together. They were bound to share a bed at some point. Still, something about it keeps nagging at him. He lies back on the back on the bed with his arms flung from him, runs his mind over the past few minutes again and again until the whole thing has lost any of the sense it might have had.

The shower turns off and he sits forward, remembers that there’s complimentary tea in the lobby, and leaves the room before she gets out of the bathroom.

 

They can’t stay at the hotel another night, because the cost would be too high, so they gather up their things and go to the car.

Once Éponine has driven past the next few towns, Marius asks, “Where are we going?”

“Some place with cheap rooms,” she says.

He gets the feeling that they’re going to be in the car for a while. He struggles to get a book from his bag, and has hardly settled back into his seat when Éponine asks “Could you read aloud?”

He looks at her a little strangely and catches her eye when she glances over.

“I don’t really want to sit in silence for seven hours,” she says.

“Alright,” he says, and starts reading. It’s an old copy of _The Outsiders_ , taken from the collection of his books carelessly on that rushed morning at the beginning of the summer. His voice is too quick and a little rough, he stutters over a fair amount of the words. He tries not to pay attention to it.

They take breaks every few chapters so that he his throat doesn’t go raw. At some point they stop for lunch, and Éponine laughs a little when he orders tea.

They finish the book around the time the sun sets.

After a few minutes of quiet, Marius asks, “Have you read that before?”

“Sort of,” she says. “I read parts of it for school. I didn’t really read the stuff we were assigned, but I listened in class.”

He doesn’t really have anything to say to that, so he hums and volunteers to go to guest registration.

The next day they read in the car again, this time _In Cold Blood_ , which Marius thinks he can take if there’s another person reading with him. They’re only about halfway through when the sun sets, and then Éponine determines that they’re close enough to where they’re going to get a motel for the night. It’s warm out, Marius notices when he gets out of the car, warmer than it was in the north.

“Let’s stay here a few days,” Éponine says. He nods somewhat absent-mindedly and goes to get them a room.

 

In the morning, Marius wakes up in a pool of his own sweat.

The air conditioner in their motel room is, apparently, broken. He didn’t realize how hot it would be here; There’s no way it’s that late in the day, either. He can hear Éponine moving around already, somehow functional in the weather, but he lies there for a moment, not wanting to move at all for the effort it would take. Finally, it clicks. It’s so hot, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to wear anything long sleeved. This isn’t usually a problem, he thinks in a panic, usually he’s in his grandfather’s house, usually the air conditioning works, usually he doesn’t have to show his arms. He puts on a shirt and gets half way through buttoning it when Éponine’s voice breaks the air.

“Listen, I know this really isn’t my place,” she says. Her eyes are looking him nervously up and down. “But if you wear that, you’re going to get heat stroke.”

He looks at her in a way that he hopes conveys that he doesn’t know what else to do.

“I don’t know if it’d work, but if you want, you can try my concealer. If that would help. I can put it on for you, too. If you don’t know how.” Her voice comes out stilted, and in some distant corner of his mind, he thinks he’s never seen her truly awkward before.

He looks at her a moment, eyes wide, but then he nods and pulls off his shirt, puts on a white undershirt in its place. He sits down on one of the beds and Éponine sits across from him, and, with surprising gentleness, she slowly covers up the scars on his arms. When she finishes, he can only see them at certain angles, and he thinks that will have to be enough.

 

“They’re old,” he explains later. “From middle school, I think, maybe Freshman year. It’s hard to remember sometimes.” Éponine had driven them both to a clearing off the side of the highway, and, stupidly, they’re sitting on the hood of the car in the beating sun.

Éponine looks at him, serious and caring, two emotions that don’t quite fit her face. “Did you drink?”

“No. Whenever things get bad, I just, stop remembering. It’s like when something really terrible happens, and you block it out.” He looks away. “I can never remember specifics.”

There’s silence for a long time, and they look away from each other. She grabs his hand.

“Did you drink?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“For,” he almost loses his nerve, “The same reasons as me?”

“No. Other things.”

Marius looks back at her. She’s still facing the horizon. A breeze makes both their shirts billow out, the hair around her face swirls for a moment. Her head turns forward, eyes downcast. Marius wonders if she is crying.

“Are you okay?” he asks. It’s like a grenade, or a free fall. Éponine still isn’t a sure thing. She might not stick around.

She hesitates. Then, she shrugs and shakes her head, just a little.

Marius thinks of something and drops her hand to dig through his pocket. He pulls out a tissue and holds it up to her. There is a moment of dead air, and then Éponine plucks the crumpled thing from his fingers. She wipes at her eyes in a way that disregards her makeup, sniffs, meets Marius’ eyes. Brilliantly, she smiles.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore.

“I tried a few times,” he says, his voice shaking and hoping that she’ll understand without him spelling it out. “But I could never make myself do it. I told myself I couldn’t find the right mark, but really I just couldn’t do it.” He laughs wetly.

“I did too,” Éponine says. It’s rushed and clumsy and Marius is surprised all the same. “I wanted to drown myself in the ocean; I never learned how to swim. But the winter was hard that year and the water was too cold. I didn’t really mind. It was so awful that I figured I’d freeze to death some night anyway. I was just trying to get it over with.” She sighs.

“How old were you?” Marius asks. He knows that when he was little he was happy. Nothing ever stays the same.

She looks bitter and almost wanting. “Young. Things hadn’t been so bad for long, but.” There is a break, like she’s trying to pick her words well. “Things change so quickly,” Éponine says. “We’d all cry a lot more if we knew when something was the end.” Her voice is rough.

 

It is early in the day when they head back to the motel. The conversation from earlier leaves Marius feeling tired, so when Éponine pulls up in front of their room, he doesn’t have a reason to complain.

She takes a nap, and he reads for a while, poetry that’s been translated to English. It’s the kind of thing that he’s read so many times that it feels like a home, and it steadies him from earlier in the day.

 

Éponine wakes and slips out in the evening, and comes back with enough food for both of them. Marius can’t find it in himself to worry. Still, he thanks her, and she shrugs. Other than that, dinner is quiet. After, Éponine channel flips until she finds something that looks like a terrible romcom and turns the volume almost all the way down.

She looks over at Marius. “Can I look at your books?” she asks.

He nods, and though he intends to go back to his poetry, he mostly just watches as she looks at each and reads the back covers. Sometimes, she’ll start reading the first chapter, but she moves on from them all quickly. Once she finished flipping through them, she puts them back in the bag and starts turning off the lights in the room. Marius stands up.

“Wait, come here, I want to teach you something,” he says. There’s a spark in him, for a moment, something of a person and not a shade. The only light in the room is coming from the glow of the TV; it paints everything a blue hue.

Éponine seems like she might give him another look, like he is truly crazy, her face catches in that familiar lift, but she stops herself. A moment later, she’s walking towards him.

He taps on his phone a few times, until something soft and a little sad spills from the speakers.

“Are you teaching me to dance?” She wrinkles her nose at him, though, strangely, gives the most genuine smile Marius has seen from her so far.

He doesn’t respond right away; He can’t think of anything clever to say.

“Of course,” Éponine says before he can come up with something, “a rich boy knows how to dance. Did you go to any cotillions?”

He shakes his head and smiles and holds out his arms anyway. She takes his hand, runs their fingers together until they fit.

 

Her face is softer in the light. Her face, Marius realizes, is softer when she looks at him.

Part of him would very much like to kiss her.

He could be brave right now, he thinks. Éponine is standing close enough. He could lean forward this instant and-

And everything might be different, and then he’ll be traveling alone again. He has taken enough leaps for the day. He pushes the thoughts from his mind and lifts his arm instead, and Éponine, indulging, almost laughing, spins beneath it.

 

That night, the wind kicks up. He can hear it scratching along the roof of the motel.

Éponine is asleep already, her hands balled into fists. Marius looks at her for a while; the way the streetlamp in the parking lot comes through the window and onto her bed, how her hair curls so gently around her face, how, in sleep, she looks a bit less like she hates the world and everyone in it.

In the dark, he brushes his teeth, and goes to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Towards the end of this chapter, they end up in a warmer climate, where Marius can no longer wear long sleeves to cover up his self-harm scars. This prompts a discussion of past suicide attempts from both Eponine and Marius. If you want to avoid this section, stop reading at the line "In the morning, Marius wakes up in a pool of his own sweat." You can pick up again at the line "It is early in the day when they head back to the motel." The conversation is referenced past that point but not in any great detail. If you want any more details from me, feel free to ask.
> 
> On a happier note, the first playlist for this fic is here! You can find it at 8tracks: https://8tracks.com/notfye/she-lit-a-fire-part-i-the-lonely-soul-mix (unlimited streaming is back, go wild y'all)

**Author's Note:**

> Got meponine prompts? Want to ask about the next update? Have a question story-wise? Just really want a friend? Hit me up over at https://notfye.tumblr.com/ (also! I will at some point post some playlists for this fic over there so! stay tuned!)
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are loved and appreciated.


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